Yousef Karsh
It seems like a good time to stick this guy in.
Yousef Karsh
b. Dec. 23, 1908 Mardin, Turkey
Karsh was born in Turkey, like Arshile Gorky. He was a brilliant portraiturist (is that a word?) like Gorky, but his medium was photography. Karsh also had a chart a lot like Len Cutler, the guy who invented the Atomic Clock.
Sun 2 Capricorn; Moon Sagittarius or Capricorn; NN 26 Gemini
Karsh photographed all the great and famous people of his time. His images of them are very will known and easy to take for granted. I saw an exhibit of the photographs up close and a few months ago and couldn't believe how brilliant they are in real life. He shot a very famous portrait of Winston Churchill (among others) in dramatic blacks and whites. The poses are generally extremely formal but there is always a life force in the subjects' gaze that just really struck me. Churchill sits there like a huge black coat, so large that you sort of confuse positive space with negative space, but his face is there completely human.
Karsh's Sun is the first thing to notice. It's conjunct Mercury on an Aries Point. For what it's worth he's got a Cazimi Mercury. His Capricorn Sun is opposite Pluto, though, same as the guy who invented the Atomic Clock. His eye (Sun) knew how to time (Capricorn, Saturn) the lens (Mercury) of his subject which was mostly famous people (PLuto). This sense of timing is amplified ten fold by Sun-Mercury-maybe Moon square Saturn. Timing, Timing, timing. How did he get those shots anyway? Timing, timing, timing. To add to this, there was a Solar Hybrid Eclipse on Dec. 23, 1908 4:44am. That's a hell of a Sun-Mercury-maybe Moon combination.
Karsh had an opposition of Neptune (photography) to Uranus (innovation). Neptune in Cancer opposition Uranus in Capricorn. This expands out into a boat shape with a string of sextiles: Neptune sextile Jupiter 15 Virgo sextile Mars 19 Scorpio sextile Uranus. This shows great talent in the arts and technology.
Labels: Boat, Capricorn, Cazimi Mercury, Eclipses
posted by Out The Comet's Ass @ 10:23 PM
4 Comments:
Technology meets art. The epitomy of a photographer. I like taking pictures as well. I remember this commercial in which man 1 states that the man 2 had a beautiful picture, and the man 2 replied, It's a painting, not a picture. Ha ha ha ha!
Ciao for now, The Barn
Yeah Barn. You've got strongly aspected Neptune in your chart. Neptune rules photography and film.
This is anecdotal and I forget where I heard it, but if recollection is accurate, it was either from an interview with Karsh himself, or someone who knew him well.
Supposedly the Churchill portrait was acheived after a very long, very unproductive and therefore very frustrating session. Karsh wasn't happy with anything, and Churchill was getting extremely impatient. Churchill was calling it quits, up and leaving, but then Karsh implored him to stay and do yet one more pose. It was in the moment that the pissed-off Churchill glared at Karsh in response to the request to shoot another, that the now famous portait was shot.
Apparently, that was part of Karsh's success as a photographer - he was both persistent, and prepared to seize any moment - planned and formal or not.
M
Thanks for the great story! Sun in Capricorn opposite Pluto could certainly be persistent. I looked up Churchill's chart. He was an impatient Sagittarius with Mars in the 1st House. Posing for a portrait can be torture anyway.
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